100 Books (Why I Hate Most Classics)

I started an ambitious list earlier this year - one of those "100 Books to Read Before You Die" kind of things. I thought it would be good for me to look outside my normal fantasy/young adult genre and get some culture.

Ugh.

First off, my library didn't have 25 of the 100 listed books. How could they be that important if the library (which is not a small one) doesn't consider them important enough? I hadn't heard of any of them, so I figured I wouldn't worry about not getting to 25% of the list. I'm glad I didn't worry.

Of the 75 books I attempted to read, 14 I couldn't get into at all for various reasons. They were either incredibly vulgar, extremely boring, or written in such a way (like stream of consciousness) that I couldn't follow for more than a few pages. These are the books that got 1 star.

23 additional books got 2 stars. Many of these showed promise as far as the story line went, but I still could not continue reading them - for various reasons. Some started off really interesting but took a turn for the worse in terms of immoral plot themes. I finished a few of these because I was forced to in high school, but I hated them (too depressing, usually) and would never read them again.

I gave 3 stars to 20 books. I finished all of these but didn't like any of them enough to read them again. They were okay.

I gave 4 stars to 15 books. I liked these well enough to read once and maybe read again. Maybe.

I gave 5 stars to only 3 books. I would read these again without a question.

Basically, most classics are terrible and just like those horrible books they made us read in high school. Maybe I am being too picky, but I don't think it's unreasonable to have a book with good morals that is also interesting. I was shocked at how many awful themes I ran into in these books - things I don't want to read about or know about (such as incest, pedophilia, etc.) I don't think reading about evil makes me a better person.

In the future, I think I'll stick to books I know I'll like. :)

Here is my goodreads list of the ratings. https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4822529-sacha-head?shelf=top-100-books-read&sort=rating